


Together

by fadedmystery



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 10:24:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6466672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadedmystery/pseuds/fadedmystery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They heal together. </p>
<p>(or, what happens after "It's Quiet Uptown".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together

They heal together.  


It comes in fragments, like pieces of broken hearts being slowly but surely stitched back together. He feels it in the moments Eliza lets him hold her hand. He sees it in the moment his children do something ridiculous and entertaining and it doesn’t make him think that there should be one more child joining in. He hears it when the sound of French or the piano doesn’t make it want to turn away. Tiny moments, inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but the grand plan doesn’t seem as important to him anymore.  


Sometimes the fragments don’t come at all. He hears it in his daughter Angelica’s sobbing (it rarely ever stops these days, to the point that he’s genuinely afraid for her.) He sees it in the way Eliza can’t bear to look at him sometimes: she shuts herself up in their bedroom, still and quiet and staring at a fixed point but never at Alexander. He feels it in the moments he walks the city streets, as far and long as he can go, as if the physical tiredness might replace some of the dull ache that’s seemed to have settled itself permanently into his bones.  


(This is his fault. No one ever says it out loud. No one needs to.)  


Eliza never yells at him. Not when they held Philip’s body, not during the funeral, not even after. Alexander keeps expecting her to, wants her to, even—God knows he deserves it. But the first few days, she just withdraws into herself, and later, even when she lets him hold her hand again, she’s detached. He doesn’t notice it at first—his own world is too gray and dull and he’s horrified to realize that there’s _nothing_ , absolutely no word, no turn of phrase that can adequately describe how it feels to lose a child. _Unimaginable_ is the best he can come up with, but even that isn’t enough. Later, once he’s accepted that this pain would always be a part of him (Alexander Hamilton is nothing if not adaptable), he begins to notice how far away Eliza is. How far away they both are from each other, stuck in their own bubble of grief, impervious to the other.  


So he tries. By God does he try.  


After awhile it strikes him that Eliza is trying too. She begins to seek him out and initiate conversations. She still reminds him to eat and keeps a vigil by the bed when he can’t sleep and is up all night writing essays. She doesn’t shy away from his touch but even leans in sometimes. She even smiles more at him, though the smile she used to wear before the war never does come back.  


(The only time she really, really lashes out at him doesn’t involve shouting. In a fit of desperation, he’d broken and asked her why she was being so good to him when they both knew he didn’t deserve it.  


“I’m not doing it for you,” she says quietly, eyes clear. “This is for me, Alexander. I need to live again. I refuse live the rest of my life in pain because of your mistakes.”)  


They stay by each other’s side. He slows down his writing and spends more time with Eliza and their remaining children. Philip makes him realize that no one really does have enough time, and it makes his fingers itch to do _something_ , to act because there’s so much he needs to do. But Philip also makes him realize that his fear of never having enough time has made him neglect what he already has. He cannot help the country grow, not now, maybe not ever, but he can help his family.  


(It doesn’t satisfy him. That’s alright. He doesn’t deserve to be satisfied.)  


Eliza grows to trust him again. She defends him from the nay-sayers, _yes her husband was wrong but he admitted to his mistakes and there’s something to be said for that_ (Alexander never does know if she believes the words she’s saying.) She’s not swayed by poetic love letters or flowers, but she does smile more when he makes it downstairs for supper the moment she calls. Her quiet strength never ceases to amaze him. There are days when he wonders what it would have been like to live everyday with Angelica’s fire, but at the end of the day he knows Eliza’s calm and patience are what grounds him, what he needs.  


Slowly, they work together, building the foundations of a marriage that should have been built years ago. They have another child not too long after (they call him Philip, which Alexander privately thinks is a mad idea but neither of them are really sane anyway.) They try their hardest to help their daughter. They go out about the town together. They visit Philip’s grave, and it never gets easier going there but they do get better at dealing with it. He talks about Maria, and she listens. She talks about how he ruined their lives, and he listens. They both talk about how they miss their son.  


(He’s not ashamed to admit he cries when Eliza one day tells him she forgives him.)  


“Alexander.” A soft tap on his shoulder makes him look up from the essay he’d been writing. Even after all these years, it still astounds him how beautiful his wife is. “It’s the middle of the night; come back to bed.”  


He hadn’t even noticed how much darker the outside looks. “Will you threaten to throw the papers in the fire again if I ask for time for one more paragraph?” he asks, injecting horror in his voice but his eyes betraying his amusement.  


Eliza rolls her eyes. “It’s too late an hour for your teasing,” she says, but a ghost of a smile is playing on her lips. “I mean it; go back to sleep. How you manage to wake up so early is lost on me. You have time later in the morning, Alexander.”  


He doesn’t, not really, but he lets himself be lead towards the bed anyway. Such a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but the grand plan doesn’t matter anymore. This moment, this request—this is something he can never deny her, not again.  


Many, many days later, the day Alexander wakes up early and never comes back, Eliza will realize that after Philip’s death, he’s denied her very little. She should have realized he was saying goodbye. For a man of words, it’s ironic how his goodbye was so indirectly said. Still, in some ways, she’s grateful for the way her losses have never been definite: no spoken goodbyes, just a breath after _sept_ , just a “best of wives and best of women.” Final, but never truly over.  


Somehow, there always still feels hope that there’s more, that there’s _better_. And it does. Slowly and surely, the way life tends to work—but it always does.

**Author's Note:**

> There will come a day when I will not cry after listening to "Stay Alive (reprise)" and "It's Quiet Uptown."
> 
> Today is not that day.


End file.
